The Most Extraordinary Photos You've Never Seen

Until now.

"Sometimes it's good to revisit old contact sheets," says photographer Thomas Hoepker, whose photograph of Muhammad Ali (below) is one of a handful of recently unearthed iconic images available (through November 14) in Magnum Photos's Archive Dive sale. Some months back, the agency's photographers decided to look through all of their old, unpublished images to see what they might find. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the quality of work Magnum's roster continuously produces, they came up with an incredible collection. What follows is a selection of the imagery on sale (signed prints for just $100 each!) and a note from the photographer about his or her frame.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

"This is one of many photographs I've taken of Muhammad Ali, some of which are well-known, some unknown. This particular image is from 1966, while Ali was training for a fight in London. Honestly, I can't recall much more than that, except that when Ali worked the speedball, he punished it." —Thomas Hoepker

Most Popular

"I've dug into my archive for a picture from the first story I ever shot in digital: 'Afghanistan after September 11'. This image was made in Afghanistan in early November of 2001, so you maybe you could call it a #thirteenyearsagostagram. After 9/11, I bought a digital camera and pretty much immediately left for Afghanistan, where I spent three years. Until mid November, I was waiting, mostly around the frontline, near this tree, for the anti-Taliban advance. Now, I try to imagine what it would have been like to have Instagram at that moment. What kind of picture might I have uploaded? I'm surprised how restrained and conventional I shot. I made sequences that still had all the limitations of film. I focused on one situation. I worked it. I Remember the headache with the camera, the files, the filing. I felt sometimes like I was an untrained electrician, not a photographer. Nothing of the crazy, unrestrained, all-over-the-place freedom of iphone shooting now." —Thomas Dworzak

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

"In 1946, I was 18 years old and certain that I would become a professional photographer. While still in public school, I managed to save enough to buy my first serious camera—a Rolleiflex with which I shot all my pictures for several years at belly level. Eventually, I moved up to eye level, shooting where I still am with modern cameras. Recently, while looking in to my old proof sheets and seeing pictures I had taken over 60 years ago, I was pleasantly surprised at what I shot while still a teenager. The picture of a window washer taken 68 years ago is one of those 'found' images and a small part of a rescue from the depths of my archive." —Elliott Erwitt

"I took this picture in the Atacama Desert of Chile in 2007. It was my first trip back to Chile since I lived there for six months in 2002. Those months were deeply formative for me. I was obsessed with photography but had no real outlet in college. I took the semester off from school and got an internship at a tabloid if Valparaiso. They gave me a loose leash to explore the city and make little features. I started to learn the freedom to be myself. I had my first experience with conflict during a massive rally that turned suddenly violent. I was scared and strangely liberated. And I fell in love. Although this picture is a departure from most of my work, it was in that place I discovered who I was supposed to be." —Peter van Agtmael

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

"In the winter of 1965, I explored the industrial wasteland across the Hudson River from New York City to New Jersey. I traveled on dirt roads that led through the brackish marshlands with mountainous garbage dumps used for landfill. There I met Willie Royka, who with his young son Willie Jr., picked the dumps for scrap metal in the warmer months and trapped muskrats on the colder days when the pelts were thicker. They led me deep into the New Jersey meadows where tall cattails obscured the Manhattan skyline and the marshlands became a pristine wilderness. At low tide, we made our way through the muck to the traps and the drowned muskrats. At the end of the day they invited me home, where they skinned and dried the pelts for sale. They also removed the musk gland that can hold the aroma used in perfume-making processes. It was after I photographed this family that I thought it would be interesting do a film about their lifestyle titled, Living Off the Land. Though this image has been published before in two of my books, it still continues to go unnoticed." —Bruce Davidson

"This iPhone picture was made in the Rockaways, New York, after Hurricane Sandy. Most of the time, we see news pictures for a few seconds then never see them again. Like blips on a radar screen, they are important but quickly fade into the bowels of history. The news pictures I like looking at again and again are often those with a universal message, something I can identify with that is more about the human spirit than the event. I don't know if this image has an effect on others, but to me, it is less about destruction and more about a certain resilience." —Michael Christopher Brown

"I took this picture of Marion in Croatia around 2003. We were having breakfast the morning after a quarrel, and her eyes are puffy from crying. At the time, it was a journal entry or a way to remember a moment. It did not cross my mind that pictures of my personal life would become so much a part of my work. Years later I would photograph my family in color and that would become my book, SON. While making that book, I looked back through my archives with new eyes, and pictures like this seemed charged with new and richer meaning than I was able to recognize at the time." —Christopher Anderson

Most Popular

"I took this picture when I was working on my project 'The Middle Distance.' There was a boat that was sitting out in the Caspian Sea on the coast of Azerbaijan. The project was about women, and I was researching and working on lots of different little stories about women in the region. But in between working on those stories, I would also just wander and explore with my camera. I made so much work from that trip, so there are a lot of images - like this one - that I've always liked but didn't obviously fit into the subject." —Olivia Arthur

"Most of the photographs I make are personal pictures and never end up in print. Even the magazines I shoot for on assignment publish very few of the actual selects. Sometimes these personal pictures will end up in a book of my work. Oftentimes, however, they are simply photographs which I hope resonate, yet rarely find a publication home. I do a lot of personal work in Rio de Janeiro, and this of a parkour artist making a jump on Ipanema Beach is such a moment." —David Alan Harvey

"When I began photographing the women who performed striptease at carnivals in the early 1970s, I had two Leicas: One for color, the other black and white. I did portraits with a medium format camera. As I immersed myself further into the world of the Girl Show, I realized that the ASA of color film at that time couldn't handle the exposure I needed. Daylight was fine, but by night I ended up shooting handheld at low shutter speeds and still had to push the B&W film to 1600 to render the interiors of the dressing room and performances. This door was the entrance to the tent for "Men and men only, no ladies, no babies". Being excluded provoked me to sneak in disguised as a young man. I'm now just beginning to rediscover the color buried in my archive, which makes me think about how different the work then would be with digital today." —Susan Meiselas

"When I was 22 or 23, I took a semester long photography course. We had an assignment, and I decided I want to follow Santa Claus. At the time, there were all these guys around New York dressing up as Santa for Volunteers of America, and they'd collect donations outside Macy's and similar locations. After they'd collect, they'd head back to the volunteers headquarters on Houston Street and go out drinking—most of the Santas were alcoholics. I took this picture because in my head, I remember thinking, "Why is Santa taking the A train. Where is his sleigh?" Later, I took this photograph to an editor at the New York Times, and he loved it, but said it's "Too late to publish for Christmas." Well, I missed the boat that Christmas, so I guess I'll catch the boat 46 years later." —Bruce Gilden